In the past 20 years, Melbourne has been transformed into a creative, vibrant and liveable city. In the next 20 years, Melbourne will become a more economically, socially, environmentally and culturally sustainable city through the help of a new long-term strategy – Future Melbourne.

Future Melbourne is a bold vision for the city’s future that will affect everybody who visits, lives, invests and works in the municipality. It is due for completion in September 2008 and will replace the City of Melbourne’s existing ‘City Plan 2010’. The six aims of the strategy are to make Melbourne a city for people, a prosperous city, an eco city, a knowledge city, a bold and inspirational city and a connected city.

From the many public forums, proposals, submissions and online discussions with the community during the past year, Council now has a draft plan which is open for community consultation from Saturday, 17 May until Saturday, 14 June 2008.

In what is believed to be a world-first on this scale for local government, the draft is also now available as a wiki so that the community can comment, discuss and directly edit the Future Melbourne draft plan.

Colour me impressed

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It’s neat and funny as the head of Metrolinx (Greater Toronto Transportation Authority) had this very question when we started the Metronauts engagement – can we put the transportation plan for 2012 up on a wiki for people to engage in more directly.

Panel 1 is on “Blogging, social networks, political movements and the media”, with Brett Solomon from GetUp!; Annabel Crabb from the Sydney Morning Herald; Peter Black from QUT; spin doctor Mark Textor of Crosby Textor, who ran the Howard government’s failed re-election campaign; and the editor of Crikey Jonathan Green.

Panel 2 is “Politics 2.0: information technology and the future of political campaigning”, with Joe Hockey, the Liberal member for North Sydney; Senator Andrew Bartlett of the Australian Democrats; Labor Senator Kate Lundy (ACT); and election analyst Antony Green.

At the City of Melbourne, we’re committed to a rigorous public consultation period, where until 14 June 2008, anybody can register and directly edit the content of the city’s next 10 year plan for the future.

Beyond the ability to undertake edits, we’re also attempting to build in additional functionality to encourage ongoing engagement via the wiki. Features such as video and audio, as well as a creative ‘Future Scenarios’ section where members of the public can edit, discuss or write their own creative stories of the future.

We hope you’ll have the opportunity to jump across and check us out. Any feedback greatly appreciated.